Orlando Bloom Archives

Review: ‘Gran Turismo’ (2023), starring David Harbour, Orlando Bloom and Archie Madekwe

August 2, 2023

by Carla Hay

Archie Madekwe in “Gran Turismo (Photo by Gordon Timpen/Columbia Pictures)

“Gran Turismo” (2023)

Directed by Neill Blomkamp

Culture Representation: Taking place in Europe and in Asia, the action film “Gran Turismo” (based on a true story) features a racially diverse cast of characters representing the middle-class, working-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: British video gamer Jann Mardenborough, an expert in playing the racing car video game “Gran Turismo,” is recruited to become a professional race car driver, but he faces naysayers, critics and his own self-doubt.

Culture Audience: “Gran Turismo” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the “Gran Turismo” video games, the movie’s headliners, and stories about sports underdogs.

David Harbour in “Gran Turismo (Photo by Gordon Timpen/Columbia Pictures)

Based on true events, “Gran Turismo” offers crowd-pleasing action and capably acted drama in this story about a video gamer recruited to become a professional race car diver. This well-paced movie is a little hokey but not entirely predictable. If “Gran Turismo” hadn’t been based on many things that happened in real life, a lot of it would be hard to be believe.

Directed by Neill Blomkamp and written by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin, “Gran Turismo” (which takes place in Europe and in Asia) is named after Sony’s popular “Gran Turismo” video game series, where players can simulate being race car drivers. (Sony is also the parent company of Columbia Pictures, the distributor of the “Gran Turismo” movie.) The movie’s chief protagonist is a Brit named Jann Mardenborough (played by Archie Madekwe), a character based on the real Jann Mardenborough. Jann is a “Gran Turismo” gaming expert in Wales. He has his life changed forever when he is recruited to become a professional race car driver.

The movie shows that Jann’s introduction to being a professional race car driver had many setbacks, challenges, naysayers and supporters. The two men who make the biggest difference in Jann’s racing career are optimistic motorsport executive Danny Moore (played by Orlando Bloom) and jaded racing trainer/engineer Jack Salter (played by David Harbour), who is a former race car driver. These two mentors also get a lot of backlash for working with Jann and other video gamers who are recruited to try out for professional racing. Jack is a fictional character created for this movie, but Danny is based on real-life GT Academy founder Darren Cox.

In the beginning of the movie, Jann (who is in his early 20s) is a university dropout who has taken a job as a construction worker at the same place where his stern father Steve Mardenborough (played by Djimon Hounsou) works. Jann and Steve often have to work side by side on construction projects. Steve knows that Jann has wanted to become a race car driver since Jann was a child. However, Steve is doubtful that this dream could ever come true for Jann.

Meanwhile, Jann’s mother Lesley Mardenborough (played Geri Halliwell Horner—yes, she’s Ginger Spice of Spice Girls fame) is entirely supportive of whatever Jann wants to do with his life. Jann lives with his parents and Jann’s younger brother Coby Mardenborough (played by Daniel Puig), who is in his late teens. Steve tells Jann that Jann has to decide to go back to school or continue working with him in construction. “There’s no future in racing,” Steve firmly tells Jann.

Near the beginning of the movie, Danny is shown in Tokyo at Nissan headquarters. He is pitching a skeptical Nissan board member (played by Sadao Ueda) on the idea that the best “Gran Turismo” video game players in the world can also be the best race car drivers in the world. Danny’s idea is to have Nissan sponsor the winner of a worldwide contest where the “best of the best” Gran Turismo players in the world will train at GT (Gran Turismo) Academy. Of these trainees, only one will be chosen to go on the professional racing circuit and will be sponsored by Nissan.

Danny also goes to London, where he meets with Jack, a mechanic who works on the professional racing circuit. Danny tells Jack that he wants to hire Jack to be the chief trainer and chief engineer at GT Academy. Why? Because Jack has the skills, and he used to be a promising young professional racer about 20 to 25 years ago, until he quit after a fateful race at Le Mans.

Jack later reveals the details to Jann about what happened at that race. The story is exactly what you think it might be. When Danny initially approaches Jack about the GT Academy job offer, Jack thinks GT Academy is a terrible idea and immediately rejects the offer.

Back in Wales, Jann hears about this GT Academy contest from his best friend Persol (played by Nikhil Parmar), who encourages Jann to enter the contest. Meanwhile, Jann has a flirtatious crush on a local student named Audrey (played by Maeve Courtier-Lilley), but he’s too shy to ask her out on a date. Jann and his father continue to argue about what Jann wants to do with his life.

One night, after Jann, a friend named Percy (played Lloyd Meredith) and Coby have been out drinking alcohol at a nightclub, they are about to head home in a car that Jann is driving. Jann isn’t drunk, but he’s consumed enough alcohol to be over the legal limit. He could be arrested for driving under the influence. Jann is supposed to enter the GT Academy contest in just under 12 hours.

Jann, Percy and Coby are in a very good mood, until they see that police officers have put a checkpoint in their way and are stopping all drivers to check for anything suspicious. Jann, Percy and Coby get nervous, because they know that whichever cop stops them can probably smell the alcohol on Jann’s breath. It’s a one-lane checkpoint, and there’s a car behind them, so they can’t reverse and leave.

At first, Jann decides to play it cool and thinks he can get past the checkpoint without any problems. But as their car gets closer to a police officer who is stopping and questioning the drivers, Jann impulsively cuts in front of the other drivers and speeds away. The police give chase in their cars. Part of this scene is in one of the “Gran Turismo” trailers showing that Jann gets away with this driving stunt. It’s also shown in the “Gran Turismo” trailers that Jann gets into GT Academy. Jann’s father Steve obviously disapproves.

Jack ends up taking the job to be GT Academy’s chief trainer/chief engineer, after an incident where he was insulted by one of the young hotshot racers whom Jack had to work with as a mechanic. The guy who insulted Jack is Nicolas “Nic” Capa (played by Josha Stradowski), who is a sports movie cliché of being a “too cocky for his own good” main rival to the story’s underdog protagonist. Nic called Jack a “flamed-out has-been,” so Jack quit his mechanic job on the spot and then took Danny’s job offer to be the chief trainer/chief engineer for the GT Academy rookies.

Jack isn’t exactly the type of leader to give uplifting pep talks. The first time he meets Jann and the other GT Academy trainees in a group meeting (with Danny also in attendance), Jack tells all of the trainees that they will fail. In addition to Jann, the other GT Academy trainees are Matty Davis (played by Darren Barnet) from the United States; Avi Bhatt (played by Harki Bhambra) from Great Britain; Leah Vega (played by Emelia Hartford) from the United States; Chloe McCormick (played by Lindsay Pattison) from Great Britain; Henry Evas (played by Mariano González) from Spain; Klaus Hoffman (played by Maximilian Mundt) from Germany; Sang Heon Lee (played by Joo-Hwan Lee) from South Korea; and Marcel Durand (played by Théo Christine) from France.

From the beginning, Matty stands out as the most confident and skilled trainee. In practice races, he usually wins against the other trainees. And therefore, Matty is considered the frontrunner to be the GT Academy trainee who will be chosen to go on the professional racing circuit. Matty also excels in GT Academy’s media training classes, where he shows a knack for being charming in media interviews.

By contrast, Jann is insecure about his abilities and starts off being one of the average trainees in the group. In media training, Jann is awkward and timid in mock interviews. However, Jann is a very hard and determined worker, and he begins to improve until Jann and Matty are nearly equal in racing skills. It’s a somewhat friendly, somewhat tense rivalry.

Even with Jann’s progress on the racetrack, Danny privately tells Jack that Matty is Danny’s top choice to win the contest, because Danny thinks that Matty is more skilled at public relations. As far as Danny is concerned, Matty is the “perfect package” to represent GT Academy. Jack sees a lot of himself in Jann, because Jack also used to be an underdog who was insecure about his abilities.

Of course, you all know where this is going, because it’s already been revealed in the “Gran Turismo” trailers. Even if you already know the outcome, “Gran Turismo” does a very good job of creating suspenseful racing scenes, due in large part to talented cinematography from Jacques Jouffret. In the race that will determine who will be chosen to represent GT Academy on the professional racing circuit, Jann and Matty are the frontrunners and finish the race within a fraction of a second of each other. It’s up to Jack to decide who’s the winner.

Jann is far from being a star when he starts out on the professional racing circuit. He comes in last or close to last in several of his races, which take place in various countries, such as Austria, Germany, Turkey, Spain and United Arab Emirates. And he gets a lot of criticism from people who think racers should get to the professional level through the traditional way. Jack’s nemesis Nic is one of these haters. Nic’s father Patrice Capa (played by Thomas Kretschmann) owns the team where Nic is a star racer.

Even though Jack started off as very cynical about GT Academy, Jack is won over by Jann and some of the other trainees. In the face of all the backlash about video-gamers-turned-racers, Jack becomes Jann’s biggest supporter and champion. If the thrilling racing scenes are the heart of “Gran Turismo,” then the mentor/protégé relationship between Jack and Jann is the soul of the movie. As already shown in the movie’s trailers, Jann and Audrey begin a romance, but that that relationship isn’t nearly as interesting as the Jann/Jack relationship, where Jack almost becomes like a surrogate father to Jann.

“Gran Turismo” has a running joke about Jann having a ritual of listening to Kenny G’s “Songbird” and Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” to get him relaxed and ready for races. (An epilogue in the movie says that in real life, Jann Mardenborough actually does have this music ritual of listening to Kenny G and Enya.) Jann gets some teasing and curiosity about it from his colleagues, but he’s easygoing and shrugs it off.

“Gran Turismo” isn’t all fun and games. The movie gets into some heavy emotional territory when Jann experiences a life-altering race that causes a lot of trauma. One of the best parts of “Gran Turismo” is how people deal with the aftermath of what happens in this race. Madekwe and Harbour have standout scenes during this part of the movie. If anyone thinks that “Gran Turismo” is like the most recent mindless schlockfest movies in the “Fast and the Furious” franchise, then think again.

That doesn’t mean that “Gran Turismo” doesn’t have its share of mawkish moments. There are several scenes with slow-motion and freeze-frame shots that are a bit corny. Likewise, viewers might have mixed reactions to how director Blomkamp makes the racing scenes look like the “Gran Turismo” video games, with achievement levels shown in big letters on the screen. But when you’re making a movie for the same company that owns the “Gran Turismo” games, it seems like almost a requirement to make the movie look like the video games.

Fortunately, the “Gran Turismo” screenplay and the performances from the principal cast members don’t make it a soulless corporate movie, even though there’s plenty of product placement. No one involved in the racing circuit is presented as a nearly perfect hero in “Gran Turismo.” And even the “villains” have a realistic point of view, because they think racing is a sport that should be for people who trained in the traditional ways.

It’s not said out loud, but observant viewers of “Gran Turismo” can see that this type of gatekeeping has elitist overtones, because car racing has traditionally been a sport for people who can afford to train for it. By allowing video gamers to enter the sport, it makes it a more even playing field for people from more diverse economic backgrounds to participate. And that type of diversity is perceived as a threat to many people who have been accustomed to having only certain types of people involved in this sport.

Jann’s father Steve isn’t depicted as a terrible parent who degrades Jann. He’s a concerned parent who doesn’t want to see Jann get hurt physically or emotionally in Jann’s attempts to become a professional racer. Hounsou and Halliwell Horner don’t have a lot of screen time in the movie, but they give effective performances. They have a few tearjerking scenes in the movie.

Bloom gives a serviceable performance as Danny, whose character could have used more development. At times, Danny fades into the background of the movie, as the Jann/Jack relationship becomes the central storyline. The “Gran Turismo” movie could have been more realistic in showing Danny’s wheeling and dealing behind the scenes—it’s over-simplified, by having Danny being able to convince people to do what he wants after just one or two meetings.

“Gran Turismo” is by no means a masterpiece. It won’t be widely considered as one of the best car racing movies of the decade. But in terms of entertaining viewers with adrenaline-packed racing scenes and by having some meaningful humanity in the story, “Gran Turismo” delivers, and it’s a movie that can be enjoyed by people who know nothing about the “Gran Turismo” video games.

Columbia Pictures will release “Gran Turismo” in U.S. cinemas on August 25, 2023. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in select U.S. cinemas on August 2, 2023. Several other sneak previews pf “Gran Turismo” will take place in U.S. cinemas before the movie’s official U.S. release date.

Review: ‘Needle in a Timestack,’ starring Leslie Odom Jr., Cynthia Erivo, Orlando Bloom and Freida Pinto

January 4, 2022

by Carla Hay

“Needle in a Timestack”

Directed by John Ridley

Culture Representation: Taking place in unnamed U.S. cities, the sci-fi drama “Needle in a Timestack” features a racially diverse cast of characters (black, white and Asian) representing the middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: In this time-bending story, two men and two women experience their lives differently when the men and women pair off as couples at different points in their lives.

Culture Audience: “Needle in a Timstack” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching a convoluted, poorly written and extremely dull movie.

Orlando Bloom and Freida Pinto in “Needle in a Timestack” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

Looking for a needle in a haystack is more fun than watching “Needle in a Timestack.” This excruciatingly dull movie tries to have a “musical chairs” approach to romance, but it’s ultimately a time-wasting bore with nothing to say. Unfortunately, this misguided movie doesn’t do much with its talented cast except give them snooze-inducing dialogue and scenarios that are just too ill-conceived to take.

“Needle in a Timestack” is based on Robert Silverberg’s 1966 collection of sci-fi short stories the same name. It’s easy to see how “Needle in a Timestack” screenwriter/director John Ridley thought that the intriguing concept of time-traveling changing the course of people’s romances that should be made into a movie. But this concept just turns into a haphazard mishmash of tedious scenes where the actors look almost as confused as viewers will be if they try to wade through this cinematic muck.

“Needle in a Timestack” is about two men and two women who have intertwined romances, but the main couple that audiences are supposed to be rooting for are spouses Nick Mikkelsen (played by Leslie Odom Jr.) and Janine Mikkelsen (played by Cynthia Erivo), who are the couple who gets the most screen time. Nick works in real-estate development for an architectural firm called Randall Corp. Janine is a photographer. Nick and Janine have been married for five years. (“Needle in a Timestack” takes place in the U.S., but the movie was actually filmed in British Columbia.)

The other two people in this quasi-love quadrangle are business mogul Tommy Hambleton (played by Orlando Bloom) and Alex Leslie (played by Freida Pinto), who are presented as possible threats to Nick and Janine’s love for each other. At various points in the movie, these couplings are shown: Nick and Janine; Tommy and Janine; Nick and Alex; and Tommy and Alex. The movie then plays a lot of tricks over which scene might be a flashback, an altered reality, or possibly a figment of someone’s imagination.

At first, Nick and Janine seem like a blissful married couple in love. When they’re at a house party together, Nick looks adoringly at Janine and says to her, “Sometimes, when you’re not looking, I watch you from across the room. And I ask myself, ‘If I didn’t know you, would I still fall in love with you?'”

The beginning of the movie shows that Janine has made a sad video of herself where tears are rolling down her cheeks. Janine says wistfully as she looks into the camera: “Love is drawn in the form of a circle. No one knows where it begins, and it never really ends. You and I, we are forever and always and all ways.”

Why is Janine so upset? And why is she talking like a cheesy Valentine’s Day card? The movie comes back to this video as a placemark to show viewers that Janine might know something that some of the other characters might not know. That’s because in this movie, memories and versions of reality can be erased by people who have the money to time travel and alter the fates of themselves and loved ones. Messing with fate in this way results in a “time shift,” which can usually be detected when people get nosebleeds.

Nick experiences a series of unsettling time shifts that are so alarming to him that he tells Janine that he suspects someone is trying to “erase” their marriage and possibly their memories of each other. Nick eventually figures out that Janine’s wealthy and jealous ex-husband Tommy is causing these time traveling manipulations because Janine broke up with Tommy, and Tommy is still bitter about it. When Nick confronts Tommy (who’s in charge of a company called Hambleton Solutions) about his suspicions, Tommy smugly replies by saying, “No one can really change the past. Just clean up the present a little.”

Nick is so sure that Tommy is going to erase Nick’s memories, Nick gets help from a company that sells Past Protect, which is described as a cloud service for storage of memories. People upload their photos and files on Past Protect to preserve memories. There’s some very manufactured and predictable drama about the Past Protect part of the story.

The rest of “Needle in a Timestack” sluggishly goes back and forth in different “realities” that show the four different couplings that happen between Nick, Janine, Tommy and Alex. None of these pairings is the least bit interesting or sexy, although the movie tries its hardest to make it look like Nick and Janine are the most “passionate” of the four pairings. The personalities of all these characters are so bland, it’ll be hard for viewers to remember much about the movie’s characters.

Odom and Erivo seem to be doing their best to play a convincing married couple, but their acting just seems a bit too forced in their love scenes. Bloom and Pinto look like they’re just going through the motions and reciting their lines. It doesn’t help that almost all of the dialogue in the film is awkward and stilted. (Trivia note: Odom and Pinto also portrayed a couple in the 2020 post-apocalyptic drama “Only,” which isn’t a very good movie but at least it’s much more interesting than “Needle in a Timestack.”)

“Needle in a Timestack” also has a time-wasting subplot about Nick’s neurotic younger sister Zoe Mikkelsen (played by Jadyn Wong), who’s a self-admitted commitment-phobe when it comes to romance. There are several tiresome scenes in the movie showing Nick and Zoe having phone conversations where Zoe constantly talks about her best friend Sibila (played by Laysla De Oliveira), who’s originally from Portugal.

Zoe invites Nick to go rock climbing with her and Sibila, but Nick declines the offer because he thinks rock climbing is too dangerous. And in a movie where people try to change something in the past that they didn’t want to happen, it’s very easy to guess what happens during this rock climbing trip and what someone wants to do to change it. However, this subplot didn’t need to be in the story and just seems like the filmmakers’ way of stretching the already thin plot even more.

It’s not as if Ridley is new to making movies from adapted screenplays. He won an adapted screenplay Oscar for writing the 2013 drama “12 Years a Slave,” a movie where he was also an executive producer. “Needle in a Timestack” tries to look like a movie that’s a mind-bending puzzle, but it’s really a series of scenes that are patched together like different people’s hazy memories. Much of the story becomes unfocused to the point where viewers might be wondering why this movie was even made. “Needle in a Timestack” can easily put viewers to sleep, so at least the movie is good for the purpose of curing insomnia.

Lionsgate released “Needle in a Timestack” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on October 15, 2021. The movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 19, 2021.

Review: ‘Retaliation,’ starring Orlando Bloom, Janet Montgomery, Charlie Creed-Miles and Anne Reid

July 24, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Retaliation”

Directed by Ludwig Shammasian and Paul Shammasian

Culture Representation: Taking place in England, the dramatic film “Retaliation” features an all-white cast representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An enraged demolition worker seeks revenge on someone from his past who has moved back into the area.

Culture Audience: “Retaliation” will appeal primarily to people who can tolerate watching an emotionally realistic movie about brutal abuse and trauma.

James Smillie in “Retaliation” (Photo courtesy of Saban Films)

The expression “Hurt people hurt people” comes from the real psychological cause and effect of people who’ve been hurt by abuse who then turn their rage on themselves and/or other people. That’s exactly what’s going on with Malky (played by Orlando Bloom), the troubled soul at the center of the intense drama “Retaliation.”

Directed by brothers Ludwig Shammasian and Paul Shammasian, “Retaliation” (which was formerly titled “Romans”) isn’t a simple revenge film. It’s also a scathing commentary on institutions and people who cover up or deny abuse, thereby allowing the abuse to be inflicted on more people, with no real accountability.

Malky is a 37-year-old unmarried, childless man who’s a demolition worker somewhere in England. It’s an ideal job for someone with the amount of rage that Malky has. And in this story, the building that he and the rest of the men in his demolition crew are destroying is a Catholic church where Malky used to go as a child. A giant crucifix in the middle of the church is symbolic of different things to different people in this story.

Malky lives with his widowed mother (played by Anne Reid), who’s a devout Catholic. His mother (who doesn’t have a name in the movie) likes to reminisce about happier times, before Malky became an angry and disturbed person. In an early scene in the movie, she and Malky sit in their living room, as she looks through old photo albums and rambles on about the people and places in those photos.

Malky’s story is revealed in bits and pieces, like a puzzle, but those puzzle pieces are very easy to put together, since the movie drops obvious hints about what happened to Malky to make him filled with so much animosity, before everything is revealed in the last third of the film. People expecting this movie to have a lot of non-stop fight scenes will be disappointed because the real battles are the ones that Malky has with himself.

Malky (who is covered in tattoos on the front and back of his torso) has a girlfriend/lover named Emma (played by Janet Montgomery), who works as a waitress at Malky’s favorite pub. It’s a bar where the co-workers whom Malky is closest to—a gruff Scot named Joe (played by Alex Ferns) and a meek teenager named Billy (played by Rory Nolan)—also hang out on a frequent basis.

Malky is an ex-con who went to prison for a violent crime. And one day, Joe tells Emma the full story of why Malky went to prison. It gives further insight into Malky’s character and why he might not be the cold-hearted jerk that he can appear to be.

Malky and Emma have an up-and-down relationship because he has a habit of emotionally pushing her away when he might feel too vulnerable. It’s clear that she’s in love with him, and she’s hoping for a more serious commitment to the relationship that Malky hasn’t been ready to give to her.

And he’s not exactly a romantic type: Their sexual liaisons are usually in a dirty back room at the pub. There are no flowers or love notes in this relationship. Malky spends a lot of time at Emma’s place, but he won’t make the commitment of living with her. And it’s not really a courtship if Malky shows no interest in taking the relationship to the next level.

Even though Malky has told Emma that he doesn’t want their relationship to be serious or exclusive, he’s also very jealous and insecure about the possibility that Emma might leave him. Therefore, Malky gets very upset with Emma when he sees that she’s accepted a car ride home from a male friend named Pete (played by John Whitby), whom Malky is sure is really trying to seduce Emma.

Emma insists that she and Pete are just casual friends, but Malky starts a mean-spirited argument with her about it. This quarrel is Malky’s way of testing how far he can push Emma before she’s had enough, as if he’s daring her to break up with him. She’s aware of his mind games, and won’t give in to Malky’s predictions that she will eventually leave him.

There’s a Catholic priest named Paul (played by Charlie Creed-Miles), who preaches on the streets near where Malky works. Paul gets to know Malky, and ends up playing a pivotal role in Malky’s chaotic journey. But how far will Malky go when his thoughts of revenge start to consume him?

While out grocery shopping with his mother one day, Malky’s violent temper is on display when he sees two young men horsing around in the aisles. During this harmless playfighting, the two guys accidentally knock some merchandise from some high shelves. Malky pounces on them and starts a fist fight, before his mother and some store employees stop the melee.

Later, at home, his mother shames Malky and tells him that he’s become an embarrassment to her. She also keeps telling him that she knows something is wrong with him, but he denies it. He just tells his mother that he’s tired. But it’s obvious that something is very wrong with Malky.

Malky has a disturbing secret fetish, which is shown in the movie. (Be warned: This is not for the faint of heart.) He sodomizes himself with a long cylinder-shaped stick, while watching himself do that in the mirror. It’s clear from the expression on his face that he gets some kind of sexual satisfaction from this act. What would cause someone to commit this type of self-harm?

The answer comes one day when Malky is in the men’s room of the pub. He sees a white-haired older man (played by James Smillie), who’s wearing a black suit and standing at a nearby urinal. And the expression on Malky’s face is as if he’s seen a ghost. Malky later sees in a newspaper article that a prominent member of the community who had moved away years ago has now moved back in the area.

The rest of the movie shows Malky’s inner and outer turmoil, as he tries to come to grips with the fact that this person is now living in the area again. It will be easy to figure out why Malky wants revenge on this person, once this person’s occupation is revealed in the story. (All of that information won’t be revealed in this review.)

As the troubled and tormented Malky, Bloom gives a very convincing and riveting performance as someone who is haunted by demons from his past. The question throughout the film is if or how Malky is going to deal with his thoughts of revenge. And in case it wasn’t clear enough that Malky intends to get violent, there’s a scene in the movie that shows Malky holding a sledgehammer while waiting outside a building for the person who’s the target of his rage to show up.

The Shammasian brothers don’t give viewers much respite from the onslaught of emotional pain in this movie, but the directors and screenwriter Geoff Thompson do give viewers a lot to think about, in terms of how many other people like Malky are out there who’ve gone through the same disturbing abuse and betrayals of trust. “Retaliation” has a definite message that living with this type of trauma is even worse than any prison sentence that could be imposed for getting hateful revenge.

Saban Films released “Retaliation” in select on digital and VOD on July 24, 2020. The movie was released in various countries in Europe, as of 2017.

Review: ‘The Outpost,’ starring Scott Eastwood, Caleb Landry Jones and Orlando Bloom

July 3, 2020

by Carla Hay

“The Outpost”

Directed by Rod Lurie

Culture Representation: Based on real events and taking place in northern Afghanistan in 2009, the war drama “The Outpost” features a racially diverse (white, African American, Asian, Latino and one Native American) and almost-all male cast portraying members of the U.S. Army, Afghanistan natives and Pakistani Taliban fighters.

Culture Clash: During the war in Afghanistan, a group of U.S. Army soldiers stationed at a remote outpost come under attack by Taliban terrorists.

Culture Audience: “The Outpost” will appeal to primarily to people who like war movies that realistically portray the terrifying battles and deep emotional toll that war can take on people who fight on the front lines.

Orlando Bloom in “The Outpost” (Photo by Simon Varsano/Screen Media Films)

Based on a true story, the effective drama “The Outpost” recreates the Afghanistan War’s Battle of Kamdesh (also known as the Battle of Outpost Keating) that took place on October 3, 2009, in such brutal and realistic detail, that some viewers watching it might feel as if they’ve gone through an emotional war zone just by seeing this movie. The battle doesn’t take place until halfway through this 123-minute movie. But by then, viewers get a sense of what life in the outpost was like for those involved before some of their lives were tragically lost.

Capably directed by Rod Lurie, “The Outpost” begins with this on-screen text to give viewers a historical view of the story in the movie: “In 2006, the U.S. Army established a series of outposts in northern Afghanistan to promote counterinsurgency. The intent was to connect with the locals and to stop the flow of weapons and Taliban fighters from Pakistan.”

One of those outposts was PRT Kamdesh, a relatively small station that was located at the bottom of a valley surrounded by the Hindu Kush Mountains. The location was remote and an easy “sitting duck” target if attackers wanted to use the mountain range as the perfect position to fire guns and bombs down below. And that’s exactly what happened when about 400 Taliban fighters ambushed the approximately 54 U.S. Army men who were stationed at the outpost.

Before that happened, the movie shows the different personalities of several of the Army men at the outpost, as well as the culture that the Army was trying to establish while these U.S. military personnel were living among Afghan civilians. There are multiple scenes of the captain of the team trying to keep the peace with an increasingly frustrated and suspicious group of locals, led by Afghan elders, who are slightly appeased when they are offered money by the U.S. military to help build schools in the area.

Paranoia and tensions run high at the outpost and the nearby communities. The U.S. soldiers capture a young Afghan man taking photos of the outpost, and they temporarily hold him for questioning. The local Afghan people consider it to be a kidnapping.

And although U.S. military men at the outpost have Afghan men helping with translating and acting as lookouts, many of the locals start to feel disrespected by the American soldiers. Some of the soldiers are arrogantly skeptical of a local Afghan man who keeps warning them that Taliban fighters will soon come to attack the outpost.

Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson adapted the movie’s screenplay from the nonfiction book “The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor,” which was written by CNN anchor Jake Tapper. (Tapper is also one of the executive producers of “The Outpost” movie. The end of the movie also includes clips of CNN interviews that Tapper did with some of the surviving soldiers.)

There are numerous military men in the story, but some are written as more distinct than others. Staff Sergeant Clint Romesha (played by Scott Eastwood) is the quintessential “good guy” soldier who, for the most part, gets along with everyone. Staff Sergeant Ty Carter (played by Caleb Landry Jones) is the group’s misfit loner.

First Lieutenant Benjamin Keating (played by Orlando Bloom) is the no-nonsense leader of the outpost. He expresses his intentions by telling his team, “We need to keep a good relationship with the locals. Respect keeps us safe.”

Another example of Keating’s leadership skills shows that he can be tough but merciful. In one scene, Keating admonishes a young soldier named Ed Faulkner (played by Will Attenborough) for smoking too much hashish. Faulkner denies that he’s addicted to hashish, but Keating disagrees. Rather than docking Faulkner’s salary (because Keating says that money eventually doesn’t mean much to soldiers at war), Keating demotes Faulkner to the ranking of private, and tells Faulkner that this is his last chance to clean up his act.

As with any large group of people who work together, there is camaraderie and there is conflict. During the good times, the men party together and share stories of their loved ones at home. Tension-filled arguments sometimes turn into physical fights, such as when hotheaded Staff Sergeant Justin T. Gallegos (played by Jacob Scipio) angrily kicks and pushes down Private First Class Zorias Yunger (played by Alfie Stewart) for shooting bullets too close to Gallegos’ head.

And sometimes the cruelty to each other is emotional, such as when Carter is ridiculed and disrespected by some of his fellow soldiers for being a little bit of an oddball. (Carter’s eccentric ways include wearing shorts during combat.) Stephan Mace (played by Chris Born) is one of the soldiers who gives Carter a hard time.

A lot of things happen in “The Outpost” can’t be described in detail because it’s spoiler information for people who don’t know the whole story. However, it should come as no surprise that several of the men don’t make it out alive. The Taliban attack is portrayed in horrifying detail, but even among the terror, there’s a lot of inspiring bravery.

As the “misfit” Carter, Jones is the clear standout actor in the movie, particularly in the second half of the film. The dialogue in “The Outpost” isn’t very memorable, but some of the scenes were obviously written as an admirable effort to show these military men as individuals, instead of blending them all together as a generic group.

For example, there’s a sequence that shows all of the men calling home, and viewers see snippets of each and every one of their conversations. It’s a great way of showing their individuality and to give a glimpse into their personal lives. And there are small touches of humor in this serious movie, such as when a soldier holds a photo of a special female and tells another soldier that when he gets home, he can’t wait to hold and kiss her—and then it’s revealed that the female in the photo is the soldier’s dog.

Lorenzo Senatore’s immersive cinematography for “The Outpost” also makes it one of the best war movies released in 2020. In addition, the film makes a bold statement at the end by not doing the war-movie cliché conclusion of showing people being awarded medals, but instead by showing how one of the surviving heroes is wracked with survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder. Many people skip watching the end credits of a movie, but it’s worth sticking around for all of the end credits for “The Outpost.” And for viewers who get teary-eyed during realistic war movies, it might help to have some tissues nearby.

Screen Media Films released “The Outpost” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and on VOD on July 3, 2020.